


er is niks gebeurd

by windupclock



Category: SKAM (Netherlands)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Healing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Sexual Assault, Trauma, nothing direct but please be careful if sexual assault is triggering to you, this is about as explicit about liv's trauma as the show itself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 07:18:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windupclock/pseuds/windupclock
Summary: "You're a hundred thousand million trillion percent sure nothing happened?""A hundred thousand million trillion times."Liv starts to process her trauma.





	er is niks gebeurd

**Author's Note:**

> the title is dutch for "nothing happened". at least i hope it is. i don't speak dutch, so let me know if it's wrong!
> 
> i wrote this largely out of frustration at how skam nl has been presenting the sexual assault storyline in this season, and how liv's trauma seemed to disappear after she talked to marie. much of this is me projecting my own trauma onto her. sorry liv i love you :( the parts about liv's childhood are based off of the fact that noora is a csa victim. although it hasn't been explored with liv, i think it makes a lot of sense with her character, so i wanted to explore that.
> 
> again, please think twice about reading if sexual assault is triggering to you. if you do feel comfortable reading, thank you! ♡

“Nothing happened,” Marie says, shaking her head. 

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened.

Liv has been terrified for a week now. Has watched the video of herself too many times to count, more and more nauseous with each replay, trying to force herself to remember what happened next. Her memory is amateur stop-motion, jumping between frames without anything to bridge the gap. No transitory period between Morris talking about Noah and her lying in Noah’s bed, her shirt off, and -

And then nothing. And then darkness, and then the next morning, and then knowing something was wrong. Knowing everything was wrong.

And then seeing the video for the first time and not being able to breathe. 

She’s scrutinized herself a dozen times in the mirror. Felt like she was watching a stranger. An actor in a production about herself. She didn’t recognize whoever was looking back at her. This girl-shaped creature with dark circles under her eyes, with a new bruise by her collarbone the size of a thumbprint. With no marks below her waist and no new scratches to indicate a struggle. Too few of the signs on the lists she looked up to know for sure.

Not that the girl in that video could have put up much of a struggle against anyone, let alone an adult man. Drunk and confused and half-asleep. Alone. Wishing for Noah.

Vulnerable.

“You’re a hundred thousand million trillion percent sure nothing happened?” Liv asks, her voice weak.

Marie nods, keeps talking, but Liv can’t quite focus on the words above the low rush of blood in her ears.  _ Nothing happened _ .

* * *

Liv can’t remember most of her childhood.

* * *

Liv goes home again. Curls up in her bed, presses a hand against her stomach, tries to breathe deeply, the way her old therapist taught her when her panic rose too high to see over.

Her sheets smell clean and warm, the scent of detergent lingering on them. She presses her face into the cotton and shuts her eyes.

On some level, she’s relieved. It should be a weight off of her shoulders, knowing that nothing happened. Nothing really happened.

On another level, she knows it isn’t true.

She knows she didn’t take her clothes off herself. She’s watched the video until her nerves dulled to the horror of its bite. Those weren’t her hands.

Morris is a grown man, a decade older than her, who poured drink after drink for her and coaxed her to keep downing them, who got her drunk and tried to undress her. Who half-succeeded. The memory keeps slipping away from Liv’s grasp, but she knows he must have touched her, knows that was his goal, and she  _ knows  _ it isn’t right.

Even if he never got her jeans down, it’s still child pornography. It’s still assault.

But the thought hurts too much for Liv to focus on it. She feels tremulous, her skin damp with sweat, her stomach twisting. There’s a heavy feeling that settled in the bottom of her ribcage days ago and hasn’t left. Reminding her of something long-forgotten, something she can’t let herself ruminate on.

Nothing happened.

If nothing happened, Liv can move on. She can shove it down alongside everything else. She can go back to feeling in control. Not be afraid anymore. There isn’t a reason for goosebumps to crawl across her arms or for her skin to feel foreign to her touch if nothing happened, after all.

She can take back her life. Not have to think about it anymore.

Liv pulls the blanket over her head and tries to drift off to sleep.

* * *

There’s a reason Liv needs control so badly.

There’s a reason Liv can’t trust anyone else.

The reason is the thing that Liv can’t think about. The thing that is too painful to acknowledge, that her brain keeps shoving down to her sub-cortical regions to avoid the emotional toll of recalling it. Reliving it.

The reason is that the world is a deep, wide, and terrifying place, and Liv is alone in it.

Other people can depend on people. That’s fine for them. Liv tries not to judge them. Not everyone understands the world the way she does. Not everyone gets that they’ll be alone eventually. It’s better to be prepared for it ahead of time. Hurting yourself is better than leaving yourself vulnerable for something else to hurt you.

Other people need people, but Liv doesn’t. Liv needs herself.

There are people that she loves, of course. She loves her mother. Her father. Ralph and Esra, the big siblings she never had. The girls, the best friends she’s ever had, lovely and caring and irreverent. Even Noah, her wack painter kid. She cares about them. She likes being around them. She can’t let herself need them. She can’t depend on them.

She can’t trust them.

* * *

Ralph knocks on her door and comes in before Liv can answer, perching on the side of her bed. She wasn’t going to answer, anyway; she was hoping she could pretend to be asleep, but that ship has sailed. Esra follows him in and sits next to him. Both of them look at Liv with faces so tender she has to look away.

“Livvie,” Ralph says softly. “You’ve been in here for a while, honey.”

“Do you need to talk?” Esra asks, finishing his point with fluid ease. She rests a hand on Liv’s leg through the blanket. Liv flinches minutely. Feels weighed down by the gentle touch.

“No,” Liv says, turning her head away from them. She’s still wearing her clothes from yesterday, the hoodie she collapsed on her bed in. She didn’t have the energy to get up and change into pajamas.

Ralph makes a quiet noise in the back of his throat. “Are you sure?”

“Listen, nothing happened, okay?” Liv says sharply, sitting up and yanking her leg away from the pressure of Esra’s hand. It feels like she can breathe again without the touch. It doesn’t make sense. Esra would never hurt her. Wasn’t hurting her. Liv is aching anyway. “Nothing happened, so it’s fine, so you don’t need to worry about me.”

“Nothing happened?” Esra repeats, her eyebrows creasing. “What do you mean?”

“I talked to Marie yesterday. She said nothing could have happened between him and me. She wasn’t gone to the bathroom for that long.”

Ralph and Esra exchange a long look. “Okay… and what do you mean by nothing?” Ralph asks, his tone careful.

“What do  _ you  _ mean?” Liv snaps back. “I mean nothing. What else? I mean that he didn’t…” Her voice chokes off, not quite managing the words themselves.

“But, Liv… we saw the video.”

“Yes, but nothing happened after that. Marie came back from the bathroom. There wouldn’t have been enough time for him to do anything to me. So I’m fine, and you can leave me alone, okay?”

There’s a short, heavy silence. Liv fidgets with the hem of her shirt beneath her hoodie, glances away from Ralph and Esra’s eyes.

“Sweetie,” Esra starts, “he took your shirt and bra off when you were drunk and filmed you half-naked. You’re sixteen. That’s child pornography, even if you wanted it to happen, which it’s clear you didn’t, so it’s also assault. That’s not nothing, Liv. It’s a crime.”

“I know, but… but he didn’t do anything after that. He didn’t rape me,” Liv says, her voice scraping rough and painful over the word  _ rape _ . “So I don’t need to feel this way. It doesn’t have to hurt like this. It doesn’t-”

A sob swallows her words in her throat.

“Oh, Livvie,” Ralph breathes quietly. “Come here.”

Feeling small and exposed, Liv crawls into Ralph’s open arms, lets him squeeze her close. She tucks her head against his shoulder, presses her wet eyes against his sweater. She hadn’t realized she was crying. Esra wraps her arms around both of them, her forehead bumping against the side of Liv’s head. They both smell so comforting. The same detergent Liv uses, Esra’s perfume, the soft scent of home. Liv breathes deep, lets herself concentrate on this moment. She feels good here.

* * *

 

No one knows about it.

Not even her best friends. Not even Ralph and Esra. Not even her parents.

Not even Liv, really. She doesn’t know anything for sure. Her head is vague and foggy. Full of the chaos Engel talked about. Liv understands entropy. The universe trends towards disorder, and so does Liv’s brain, and Liv tries to push it back, tries to hold everything together with sheer force of will.

There have been flashes of memory for years. A slow, devastating trickle. A puzzle Liv doesn’t want to finish. She never wants to see the full picture. To know for sure. To lose any room for the sweet retreat of ignorance.

More pieces are coming back now, though. A crack in the dam, and more and more starts to rush through.

Fuck entropy.

* * *

 

Isa, Engel, and Janna come over the next day. Liv assumes Esra called them, but she can’t find it in herself to mind. Not with all of them curled around her. Engel in front of her, their foreheads pressed together. Isa behind her, combing her fingers through Liv’s curls. Janna on the other side of Engel, chin hooked over Engel’s shoulder. Their breathing slow and steady, a metronome for Liv to count her own by. 

“I need to tell you guys something,” Liv says eventually. She rolls onto her back. The girls look at her, wide eyes full of concern. Full of love.

Liv tells them everything.

* * *

The world feels a little lighter on Liv’s shoulders after that. Like the weight has been shared, like Atlas found a friend to help him hold up the sky.

She doesn’t magically stop feeling bad. Guilt creeps up and finds her, lodges its hooks in her stomach and tugs hard. Her friends shouldn’t have to deal with this. She should be strong enough to carry it on her own. Even as she finds the words to tell Ralph and Esra, the guilt burns bile-acidic and angry in her throat.

But she clears it, coughs through it, and it’s a little easier the second time around, with her friends there to hold her hands. Still there, after everything.

It gets easier.

Maybe Liv could have done this on her own. Could have shoved it down, let herself insist it was nothing until her voice went hoarse. Pretended she was fine until the heat death of the universe.

She could have, but she doesn’t need to.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to talk to me about skam or send me prompts/requests at davidrights.tumblr.com! ♡


End file.
